I was recently listening to a talk about the philosopher Wittgenstein. The lady giving the presentation mentioned that in his work there are hidden verbs which control things- essentially speaking of a deterministic structure. The lady then went on to talk about uncertainties.
I later wrote to her (no reply) to say ‘if there are hidden verbs which dictate how things are then this is a deterministic model and if it is deterministic then how can there be uncertainty, surely what we call uncertainty must be ignorance?’
An example of determinism is:
‘Newton’s third law is: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The statement means that in every interaction, there is a pair of forces acting on the two interacting objects. The size of the forces on the first object equals the size of the force on the second object.’
And if we accept the premise that we live in a deterministic world where effect follows cause then how can there be uncertainty? What we call uncertainty would be, surely, ignorance. For example, if a person falls over we can determine that a force acted upon the person to make them fall even if we do not know what the force was- were they pushed? Was it just clumsiness? Here we cannot know what the cause was but, given the laws of physics, we can state that there was a cause and that the effect of the cause was that they fell is due to gravity.
One of the most bizarre traits in people in the seeming reluctance or inability to say ‘I don’t know’. Why this is I don’t know (tee hee) but many problems can stem from this. People are too concerned with how they appear as to being how they wish to seem. Experts will speak on subject matters which they know nothing about to appear intelligent and, even worse, will pass up the opportunity to learn out of a conceit.
We live in an age of global uncertainty and two of the nominal leaders in the world refuse to admit that they do not know. When asked about something he does not know Trump will say ‘it’s great, it’s stuff’ and May, with Brexit, spouts out empty platitudes without any real meaning. We look to our leaders to lead and if they do not know something we are uncomfortable. This is because we need certainty, we presuppose that there are hidden verbs and reasons that create a deterministic model which will be great and we won’t have to worry. However, if a leader stood up and said this is unprecedented however, I have a team of experts who, from history, can held to determine the best course of action then would we be reassured?
Even human behaviour can be predicted by the use of probability and it seems certain that the majority of, if not all existence is, to a certain extent, deterministic however, the model in which it operates is beyond our ability to comprehend yet we still have what we call uncertainty which essentially is ignorance. We cannot know how the future will unfurl and even if it is determined that has little or no real effect on us here, right now.
So we should take what we know and move on into the future attempting to do the best that we can and remember, to paraphrase Socrates, the wisest man is the man who knows that he knows nothing so asks for help.
‘till next time
thegreaterfool2016 